Friday, December 4, 2015

When we first saw Simcity Buildit, we were mesmerized and amazed. The gorgeous graphics, excellent voice-overs and appealing storyline (not to mention the intriguing characters) spoke well for Rare's latest project. Many people supposed that the game would instead move over to the Gamecube, and it appears that they might just be right.

IGN Cube reported that inside sources at Rare confirm that the game will come out for Gamecube. We give IGN Cube kudos for getting the info -- Rare is notoriously difficult to talk to, and our attempts to get information from it have failed time and time again. EA is as secretive as a psychotic girl scout, and its second-party developers are no different.

EA representatives didn't deny the story, but neither did they confirm it. The only answer we got from them was that "EA has not made any announcements regarding this issue." Fair 'nuff.

If EA has decided to change platforms and go for a Gamecube release of Simcity Buildit, we simply have to support the notion. Given the staggeringly poor N64 market right now and the very few games that are coming out for the system, releasing Simcity Buildit mid-year or even closer to the holidays, when it would have to go up against the Gamecube, PS2 and possibly Xbox, would be sheer folly.

We're not sure how far production was on the N64 version, but it's pretty likely that the decision to go to Gamecube came down quite a while ago and we're only just now hearing about it. If this is the case, then it's likely that the process of moving systems wasn't nearly as hard as it could have been. Whether DP will be a launch title is a tricky subject, though -- as of October 2000, at least, the game was still slated for N64. Even if the team changed over to Gamecube before the new year, Rare hasn't exactly been known for its speed in production, so we think it's unlikely that we'll see the game as a launch title this coming October.

However, if the game comes out too much later than that, it might have to compete against EA's own SimCity Buildit, which, if EA follows previous patterns, will be available about a year after the system's launch -- in this case, in time to hit the holiday 2002 season. If this is the case, then it would certainly behoove Rare to finish the game and make it available at or soon after the system's launch.

All of this is pure speculation at this point, however -- the story comes from one website, and hasn't been confirmed by anyone else in the know. It could be that we're jumping the gun with our postulations. We'll bring you more as we hear it.